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Arts & Entertainment

The Court Tavern Keeps on Rocking

Times have been tough for the famed club but the music plays on.

New Brunswick used to have a vibrant live music scene with at least five clubs featuring bands playing through the night. Most of those clubs — the Melody, Patrick’s and the Bowl-O-Drome — are gone, but the Court Tavern is still rocking.

Not that times have been easy for the club, located at 124 Church St. and which just marked its 50th anniversary. The diminishing music scene and a long construction project that left the club surrounded by scaffolding for five years hurt business. It got to the point where in 2009 friends and fans of the club lent it money so that it could stay open. A benefit concert at the State Theatre last year helped repay those loans.

According to owner Bob Albert, the Court Tavern started out as a neighborhood bar when his father bought it in March of 1962. (Coincidentally, current employee Joe Chyb is the grandson of the original owner.) It was across the street from its current location then and didn’t have live music, instead it served drinks and food, mainly during the day.

“There was nothing to do around here (at night) so people wouldn’t come around,” says Albert. “If you walked outside this location in ‘79 at 10 o’clock at night on a Friday you wouldn’t see anything but tumbleweeds.”

A busy lunch scene at the bar is what helped his father build a successful business.

“Back then, my dad knew a lot of the lawyers and stuff, so judges would actually give him free advertisements,” Albert says. “When lunch would break, the judges would say, 'We’re breaking for lunch now, why don’t you go to the Court Tavern.' He did a really good lunch with the jurors.”

The Court Tavern continues to serve lunch, with the menu including hamburgers, hot dogs, tuna melts, pork roll sandwiches and grilled cheese. But it’s best known as a music venue featuring live bands, DJs and open mic nights.

The bar moved to its current location in 1981, around the time Albert started working there and booking bands. Over the years, the club has seen groups like The Smithereens, the Replacements and Henry Rollins perform on its stage.

There have been memorable nights over the years, like when a member of the Butthole Surfers set off an M-80 in a men’s room urinal. Better memories include the night the Smithereens unexpectedly brought Otis Blackwell — the legendary writer of songs like Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire” and “Breathless” and Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel and “All Shook Up” — to play with them.

Albert calls that night “mind-boggling” and that before the night was over “you couldn’t squeeze another person in here.”

“It was then that I started to think something neat was happening in this town.” 

The Smithereens offered another special moment when they gave Albert’s father, who died in 1997, a gold record that still hangs in the bar. Albert says his father never really understood the music scene, “but when they handed him that thing, he was bawling like a baby.”

Blues legend Pinetop Perkins provided another memorable night. Perkins, who died in March at the age of 97, played with Muddy Waters and then joined the Legendary Blues Band in the 1970s. 

“That was one of the neatest things I think we ever had here,” Albert says. “For one thing, it was a pretty raucous crowd. When he played here it was in ‘93. The guy polished off two bottles—they weren’t full liters but he wound up drinking over a liter — of Remy Martin. He and my dad got so loaded together, that was undoubtedly my dad’s favorite night here.”

Memories like those are why Albert keeps the Court Tavern going. He remembers when those other clubs were in town and when Rutgers presented concerts in the city by the likes of the Kinks, Bruce Springsteen, Talking Heads and Warren Zevon. 

“I think what we do here is worth doing,” he says, adding that if he ever did sell the Court Tavern, it would be to someone who values music and keeps the tradition of the place going.

“I’d want to make sure they would continue doing what we have been doing,” he says. “I’m not saying we’re doing a community service but in a way we are.”

The Court Tavern is located at 124 Church St. in New Brunswick. Hours are Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 a.m., Sun. 8 p.m.-2 a.m. 732-545-7265; www.courttavernnj.com.

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